Increasing Entrepreneurship In Romania Through European Structural Funds And Emigration

In its cohesion policy, the European Commission seeks to use the European Structural Funds to help increase the competitiveness of European Union Member States by supporting entrepreneurial activities, mainly aiming at reducing development gaps at both regional and national level. In this context, encouraging entrepreneurship through the allocation of structural funds is a vector of economic growth and a generator of new employment opportunities. In this paper, we explore the effects of government initiatives that encourage entrepreneurship through the minimis schemes Romania start-up plus and Diaspora Start-up within the Human Capital Operational Program as a catalyst for entrepreneurship and job creation during 2014-2020. Based on empirical data, we analyze whether this support through funding had an impact on entrepreneurial activities in the targeted regions, the relationship between entrepreneurial activities on the one hand and the emigration rate and the economic performance of development regions, on the other. Our hypothesis is that there is a high degree of correlation between the number of newly established companies and the economic performance of the development regions, respectively, the emigration rate. The results of this analysis can contribute to increasing the effectiveness of entrepreneurship support policies, especially if the dependence on appropriate support policies is interrelated.